


Newfound Sympathy

by Corpium



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Episode: s02e03 Family of Rogues, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Lewis Snart's A+ Parenting, M/M, Pre-Slash, happy-ish ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 18:23:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5753557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corpium/pseuds/Corpium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Friday before Lisa Snart tells them her brother’s been kidnapped, CCPD discovers the bodies of two children in a storage unit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Newfound Sympathy

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during the 2.03 "Family of Rogues" ep and deals with the whole "Lewis Snart is a terrible father" thing, so there's some dark stuff in here (as if you couldn't tell by the summary), but none of it is explicit.

There were only so many homicides Barry could pick apart and so many ensuing emotional breakdowns he could put himself through before he was forced to employ a certain degree of emotional detachment in his day job. Now, when he’s working he’s a scientist, and when he’s a friend, a son, and the Flash, he’s a bleeding heart. The separation works for him.

Usually. This is his first case involving dead children, though, so detachment stops being an option.

When Barry examines the scene, it horrifies him. It wasn’t a meta-human who did this. It was a totally normal person. (A man, most likely, given the heavy build, 6’ 2”, over the course of nine to twelve days, nearly five months ago.)

 

o-o-o

 

He’s getting coffee with his friends the following weekend when Lisa Snart bumps into Cisco.

That evening Barry finds Snart working with his father, and this has got to be some kind of setup, but…

“I didn’t get this scar being a criminal. I got it being a daughter,” Lisa says, and really, Barry has no choice but to look into it now.

 

o-o-o

 

They locate the kids’ parents, Marty and Lindsey Thompson, that Monday. Marty is large and broad-shouldered, 6’ 2”, and it makes Barry wonder for a moment… but there are a lot of 6’ 2” men in the world, and this one’s their _father._ He’s an EMT, and there’s no way he would…. He and Lindsey seem absolutely distraught.

They’d filed missing-person reports five months ago, and when CCPD brings them in they both cry. Their eight-year-old daughter Renee, their youngest and only surviving child, does not.

“Her mom says she loves science,” Joe tells Barry. “Maybe you can get through to her.”

So Barry and Renee talk about paleontology. She avoids eye contact and shies away from all other topics, and she’s got low self-esteem and says some things that… concern Barry. (“You really like reading, don’t you?" Barry asks. “Yeah. It’s the only thing I’m good at,” she says like it’s rote fact.) But she’s just discovered her brother and sister are dead. Of course she’s a little screwed up right now. Right?

When her parents lead her out the door, she doesn’t say a word. She just nods when her mom asks if she had a good time with the "nice detective.” Barry doesn’t bother to correct her on his title, and he watches them walk out. He's just about to turn around and head back to his lab when Renee looks back at him through the glass.

Their eyes meet, and for a split-second, she looks afraid, lost, but then her mother’s hand tightens around hers, knuckles whitening, and Renee quickly looks away with a swallow. Barry stands there until they disappear in the parking lot, something sitting heavy in his stomach.

When he gets back to the lab, the evidence tells Barry how Renee’s siblings died, but it doesn’t tell him who did it. 

 

o-o-o

 

He finds Snart that evening at the Saints & Sinners dive bar. “Things are complicated with family,” Snart says, avoiding eye contact. Then, “Don’t waste your time trying to save people who don’t want to be saved.”

And then he sticks Barry with the bill. Asshole.

 

o-o-o

 

The next day, CCPD finds the decapitated body of Lewis Snart’s associate, David Rutenberg.

One thing leads to another, and Team Flash finds out there’s a bomb in Lisa’s head, planted there by her own father.

Later on the job, Barry doesn’t want to do it, doesn’t want his hunch to be right, but…. “We need to see Renee’s medical records,” he tells Joe. “And her brother and sister’s.”

Renee and her siblings have had spotty records. All of them came into the emergency room more than once with injuries, but… her brother supposedly got into fights at school a lot, and her sister played a lot of sports. As for Renee, apparently she’s particularly clumsy.

Joe gets one of the social workers’ opinions. The hospital visits could be suspicious under a certain light, but given the fights and the sports and the clumsiness... they could also be normal. Kids will be kids, right?

They bring Renee in for another interview, just in case. Her father doesn’t like it (“She just found out her brother and sister are dead! Why do you have to re-traumatize her like this?”), and he demands to sit in with her. She won’t talk until Captain Singh flatters him and asks him to discuss some pertinent details about the case out in the hallway.

Barry’s still the only one Renee will talk to, but again, she doesn’t say enough. Not really.

“How do you… feel, about your… about James and Kristy?” he asks, and he feels so awkward and so _bad_ for bringing them up. It’s not fair to her.

Renee shrugs, looking down. “I miss them. They were supposed to protect me. They promised.”

Barry’s blood runs cold. “Protect you from what?”

She shrugs again. “I don’t know.” She brought a coloring book today -- yesterday it was a dinosaur encyclopedia, and Barry finds the disparity between the two books endearing. She starts filling in the stegosaurus' body, keeping carefully within the lines.

“Protect you from what, Renee?” Barry presses.

She doesn’t answer. She just keeps coloring. She wears a long-sleeve shirt, and when she reaches for the blue colored pencil for the sky, her sleeve slides up, just enough to reveal an ugly bruise. “What happened?” Barry asks.

“Huh?”

“Your arm--” Barry gestures towards her, and she flinches away.

“Oh,” she says, settling back in her chair, almost seeming to shrink in on herself. “I climbed a tree and fell. I’m fine.” She sounds like she’s said this before, like she’s a trained actor rehearsing her lines.

Barry swallows. “I -- are you sure?”

She looks at him suspiciously. “Yeah.”

“It must have been a tall tree.”

“Yeah,” she says.

“Have you seen a doctor yet?”

She shakes her head and doesn’t look Barry in the eye. “My dad’s an EMT. He took care of it.”

“I -- look, Renee, I really think we should get that checked out--”

“Have you heard of Sue?” Renee asks.

Barry blinks. What?

“She’s the biggest T-Rex ever. Her skull’s so heavy they have to keep it in its own case.”

“Renee--”

“It’s okay, though. They made a fake one for the rest of the skeleton.”

 _“Don’t waste your time trying to save people who don’t want to be saved,_ _”_ Snart had said, and all Barry can think is _screw that._

 

o-o-o

 

That night, Barry joins the Snarts as “Sam” the techie. Lewis seriously gives him the heebie jeebies, but Barry takes care of the guards before Lewis can shoot them, so he feels like the night’s going pretty well, relatively speaking.

But then Lewis shoots him, and everything goes to Hell.

He’s the Flash again, and Len -- because he can’t think of him as Snart anymore -- is pointing the coldgun at him. Again. But this time’s different than before, because Len doesn’t want to pull the trigger.

“Kill him or you’ll never see your sister alive,” Lewis says.

_“They were supposed to protect me. They promised.”_

If Len were to shoot Barry now, Barry wouldn’t blame him.

Thankfully Cisco gets the bomb out first.

“Lisa’s safe,” Barry says, and Len breaks for all of a second before re-aiming and shooting his father. Barry doesn't stop him. He doesn't know why, but he knows he should have.

“You’re working with the Flash,” Lewis says to Len. “I thought you hated him.”

“Not as much as I hate you,” Len says, and Barry has a decision to make.

Len crouches down by his father’s body, and Barry knows he should take his gun, _knows_ he’s supposed to go to prison, but Barry also knows that Lewis is a monster of a man, knows that Lewis can’t be saved and won’t be stopped. And Barry knows that there’s a little girl in grave danger that neither he nor the Flash can save, not unless a miracle occurs.

Maybe Leonard Snart, of all people, can be that miracle.

Barry turns off his comm.

“How long before the cameras are back online?” he asks.

“Two minutes and eight seconds,” Len says distantly.

“And until the police show up?”

Now Len looks up, narrowing his eyes.

“One minute and twenty one seconds.”

Barry swallows, mind racing.

Len stands up, coldgun at his side. “What’s wrong, Barry? Feeling a little faint of heart?”

And that is so, so _dumb_ because Len essentially just stabbed his father through the heart with a giant _icicle,_ but… for some reason it makes Barry decide, “I’m going to take care of this, and you’re gonna owe me one.” And before Len can answer, Barry whisks Lewis’ body away.

It takes thirty six seconds to dispose of the body and ten to get Len out. He brings them to one of the city parks, and for once, it seems like Len's completely out of his depth. He gathers himself quickly, though.

“You’d make a great bad guy,” Len says forlornly.

“And you’d make a great good guy,” Barry returns. “Looks like today’s your lucky day.” He pulls his cowl off. It always makes his forehead sweat.

“If you’re asking me to join your little cheerleading squad, I’m flattered, but I’m afraid I’ll have to decline.”

If Barry wasn’t feeling sick from disposing of a body he might have smiled at Snart’s dry tone. “That’s not what I’m asking. Look, Snart -- Len, I mean, I… I have a question for you.” Len gestures for him to continue, and Barry can practically hear his voice in his head telling him to ask away. “If someone had found out about your father sooner when you were a kid, but they didn’t have enough evidence to do anything, what do you wish they’d have done?”

“Kill him.”

Well, that doesn’t help. Barry rubs his temples and tries to come up with a different way to say… whatever it is he wants to say. He’s not even sure what that is, though.

Len steps closer. “What exactly do you want from me, Barry?”

Barry sighs, shoulders dropping. “I don’t know. I just -- it’s one of my cases. We’re investigating the deaths of two kids, siblings, and I…. They have, had, a sister. She’s still alive, but I…. I’m afraid....”

“You’re afraid one of the parents did it.” Len huffs to himself. “Well, that explains the newfound sympathy." He leans into Barry's space. "Now what do you want me to do about it?” His breath hits Barry’s ear, but he steps away before Barry can.

“We don’t have enough evidence -- and I’m not sure if we ever will -- that they, or one of them, did it, but I know she’s not safe with them. I just, I don’t know what to do.”

Len walks around him. “So what, you want me to take them out for you? You can’t kill, but I can, I suppose. Is that how this works?”

“No!” Barry snaps, turning to face Len. “That’s not -- I just want to know what you think I should do.”

Len pauses, looking bemused. “You’re asking _me_ for ethical advice?”

“I just feel like you of all people should understand what this girl’s going through.” When Len still looks skeptical, Barry adds, “She said her brother and sister promised to protect her, but now they’re dead and she’s all alone. If Lisa was in her place, and you were… not around anymore, what would you want to happen to her?”

Len looks out at the park, his usual smugness replaced with sober contemplation. “Does she have relatives? An aunt or uncle perhaps? Grandparents?”

“Two grandparents and an aunt.”

“Run background checks on them. Then meet--”

“I already did. The grandparents have some domestic violence issues, but the aunt’s clean.”

“Auntie it is then.” Len turns to Barry with a raised eyebrow. “Unless you’re opposed to a little old-fashioned threatening?”

Barry shakes his head. “Not in this case.”

Len smirks. “Wonderful. I’ll make sure you see results by the end of the week. In the meantime…” he looks away for a moment, then looks back and says more softly, “I want to see my sister.”

“Hang on,” Barry says, and he whisks them away.

Cisco and Caitlin freak out about Barry turning his comm off, and before he can panic too much about telling his friends he’s literally _letting_ Leonard Snart get away with murder, Len lies for him and says Lewis killed himself. Lisa doesn’t buy it, but Caitlin and Cisco do, and Barry… Barry’s not sure what he wants to do. He works for the police. All his moral instincts are literally screaming at him, but… the justice system alone isn’t going to be enough to protect Renee, and the Flash can’t be there all the time to steal her away whenever something bad’s about to happen to her. He can’t truly threaten her parents, either, because everyone knows the Flash is the squeaky clean hero with a heart of gold.

Renee needs what Len can do for her, and when Barry thinks about Lewis and all the other monsters like him, it's difficult to regret not stopping Len from killing Lewis --no matter how much Barry knows he should.

Eventually Len pulls Barry aside and slips him his number. “Call me with names, addresses, and anything else you can think of, and I’ll take care of it.”

Barry nods, swallowing thickly, and Len starts to pull away before pausing and looking back at him. “You know, you’re really starting to get interesting, Barry.”

“Yeah, you, too,” Barry says before he can stop himself, and Len winks before heading out the door with Lisa, leaving Barry with butterflies in his stomach. He squashes them down and teases Cisco for making moon-eyes at Lisa. Better Cisco than him, after all.

 

o-o-o

 

Three days later, and Renee’s aunt takes custody of her. No one charges her parents with anything, but they move halfway across the country.

At least it’s something.

 _Thanks_ , Barry texts Len.

 _Anytime_ , Len texts back.

Barry smiles. This feels like the start of something new.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first coldflash fic, so comments are extra appreciated.


End file.
